Yesterday there were LOTS of birders on the Samish Flats. Joel Brady-Power led a Skagit Audubon field trip. So many people turned up that the group was broken into three caravans of three full cars each! We spread out and didn't even see one another again.

I'd like to apologize for speaking in a stentorian voice to the driver of one car that, at the start, joined my subgroup instead of the one he'd been assigned to. Turns out that the plan had been confused, and he'd been told to join my three cars. I hope you were able to zoom out of there and find the correct group!

The three groups kept in contact by mobile phone. As far as I know, nobody found the Mute Swan, or the Gyrfalcon, or the Prairie Falcon. In fact, we barely squeaked out a single Peregrine.

That goes just as well for at least two other field trips we touched base with--the two groups from Port Townsend and Port Angeles areas. Ditto for the other assorted birders that we talked to out there. One group even dipped on Eurasian Collared Dove in Edison. My group saw a lone EUCD there.

Bird of the day for me was a PACIFIC LOON at the Samish Island Public Beach (DNR Park).

At the hay-shed pullout along Bay View-Edison Road was a flock of 105 Black-bellied Plovers in early afternoon.

We saw at least 30 Eurasian Wigeons in a flock of a thousand or more American Wigeon on Chuckanut Drive, towards the extreme N end of Samish Flats.